A series of abuse allegations have been made at Trelawney House with the care home pushed to make "urgent improvements".

Trelawney House run by Spectrum, based at Polladras in Breage, has been rated overall as inadequate and placed into special measures following a recent inspection.

Trelawney House is a residential care home providing personal care to six people with a learning disability and/or autism.

In October, Care Quality Commission (CQC) carried out an unannounced inspection of St Erme Campus in St Erme near Truro and Trelawney House in Polladras near Helston to check on the action the provider had taken following previous inspections.

The St Erme care home received the same rating - and has also been placed into special measures.

Services that are placed in special measures must improve or they could be subject to enforcement action.

Trelawney House ratings:

Is the service safe? Inadequate

Is the service caring? Requires Improvement

Is the service well-led? Inadequate

In the report, the CQC says the provider failed to appropriately report and investigate incidents of alleged abuse.

The report reads:

"When incidents of abuse occurred, they had not been reported to the local authorities safeguarding team for investigation.

"At this inspection, we found these processes had not improved and this exposed people to ongoing risk of harm."

Three separate incidents were detailed in the report including a staff member mocking a person while providing personal care and being seen by staff washing the person's hands aggressively.

Another incident involved the use of a door being held closed by agency staff to restrain a person, for whom this technique was not approved.

The third incident was alleged to have involved an agency staff member speaking inappropriately to a person they supported.

The report also identifies that a person was regularly locked in their room when staff were not with them - meaning their rights and freedoms were wrongly restricted.

Some of the other findings:

• Spectrum had not adequately supported the staff at Trelawney House. There was no rota available detailing when staff were due to be on duty for the next week, so they did not know what shifts needed covering or which days they would be working that week. The provider had done nothing to resolve this issue.

• The service had a high turnover of staff and some staff said they felt anxious coming into work. The issue of unsafe staffing was raised as an issue during the previous inspection. Since then, four agency staff had been brought in to support the service, but they did not have the necessary skills, and there were not enough of them, to allow people to have a reasonable quality of life.

• People's dignity was not always respected, they were not supported to have choice and control of their lives, and staff did not support them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests.

• Accurate records of incidents and the support people had received had not been maintained. One person had sustained a head injury that required hospital treatment after a fall, yet the provider had not notified CQC, which is a breach of regulations.

• The provider had failed to appropriately report and investigate incidents of alleged abuse, despite the fact this had been identified as an issue during the last inspection.

• People did not receive the support they needed to eat and drink. One person needed to sit at a table and be accompanied by staff to prompt them to eat so that they had adequate nutrition. Staff were aware of this, yet during the inspection, this person was left alone and was not provided with the staff support they needed to ensure that they ate enough food.

See the response from Spectrum here.

Click to see the full report.

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